PRACTICE — Spring Cleaning — 10min

Spring cleaning. Where to start. It’s quiet, late in the evening. I’ve barely scratched the surface. I remember window washing, vinegar and newspaper. I remember dusting with Pledge. The smell of Lemon Pledge, etched in the nasal cavity. I remember Johnson Paste Wax, the rotating discs on the buffer. I remember sand and sandspurs, tearing at my toes, clinging to bits of rug. Spring cleaning is symbolic. A ritual of letting go. It doesn’t have to be deep cleaning. Just the letting go.

The rugs that get hauled out to the clothesline. The rug beater, a wooden stick. Puffs of dirt from the prairie. Not my home. A little house somewhere I can’t remember. I don’t think houses are as clean as they were when I was growing up. Times have changed. Roles have changed. Both parents need to work for a living. And still it’s hard to make ends meet. Spring cleaning leads me to a sunny destination after a long Minnesota Winter. Spring cleaning leads me to Spring.

Cleaning the deck windows until they are crystal clear. Power washing the wood. There is something fun about power washing. This year we will need to replace the trim on the south windows. Weather and woodpeckers have stripped them raw and full of holes. I am fond of the woodpeckers. But they can be destructive. Have you ever watched birds do their spring cleaning? Grabbing bits of feather, lint, moss, and making a nest. Preening their young, mites and ticks. Cleaning rituals are not only for humans.

Spring cleaning means tidying up the garden space, uncovering the rosebush, gathering the old brush and weeds from the end of last Fall and tossing them to the back corner. Spring means transplanting the two pines that have sprouted near the coneflowers, watching the dogwood stems turn beet red with sap, waiting, waiting, waiting for the bloom of the peony. A whole year must pass, that’s how long I wait for the next peony to bloom. Underneath the ash, grubs, a few mice and voles. The white winter squirrel, I haven’t seen her this year. What happened? Maybe a hawk or an owl found her to be easy prey.

Another 18 inches of snow last weekend. I shoveled the driveway hill and raked the roof. I am ready for Spring. In a few days, it will drop to 10 degrees again. The wind will kick up from the North; I’ll zip my jacket a little tighter. All that after a day of sunshine at 32. It’s dangerous to wait for Spring, dangerous to wait for the future to arrive at your doorstep. When all you have is right now.

Lovely writing. You speak so well about letting go, and staying in the moment. Of doing what needs to be done mindfully, with care, yet still with a longing, knowing that the peony only blooms once a year, that spring is closer than it was but not yet.

February is a hard month, March too, but the reward of spring is great.

Bo, thank you. The Winter has been a long one, that’s for sure. I’m trying to notice the changes that come each day as we move toward more and more light and warmth. When I was doing this practice, the line about the peony found it’s way into it and I remembered that I had read something similar in one of May Sarton’s journals. Or maybe it was on a tape I was listening to about her life. She lived in a home by the sea on 36 acres and noticed everything that went on around her when she lived alone there. She said she started keeping the journals as a way to help get through the depression she sometimes felt. One whole year from bloom to bloom. Yet I am assured, most of the time, the peonies will return. I have lost a few rosebushes though! I’m not an expert gardener. But I try.

I love this topic, QM, and your writing on the subject is wonderful. Letting go, staying in the moment, and realizing all we have is now are such a huge part of the spring cleaning ritual.

I skipped my usual spring cleaning festival last year. I just couldn’t work up the energy to do it, partly because it reminded me so much of my mother (and it had only been about 6 months since she had died). I think that’s why my home hasn’t felt quite right. I am actually looking forward to getting started this year as I know it will help me let go in ways I need to let go, as well as help me appreciate what I decide to hold on to for now.

When my sons were growing up, I used to create a party-type atmosphere around spring cleaning. A week or two before it was time to start, I would make invitations (by hand — no computer in the early days) for my sons and husband, and mail them to them, inviting them to participate in the annual Spring Fling. The payoff for participation was the Spring Fling Feast where I would cook a big dinner that included many of their favorite foods. We would start on a Friday night (because my husband and were both working full-time, and the kids were in school) and finish up on Sunday. We worked hard, but it was fun in many ways.

I’ll be doing a lot of it on my own this year. I think that will make it a more meditative process. There is something soothing about the repetitive movements of cleaning.

Robin, what a great idea for making spring cleaning fun for the family.

I sit in my front room and look at the windows and the carpet and the stuff and wonder, Why bother? It would be so much more fun if other people, people who enjoyed cleaning, were involved in the process.

QM, this piece was so alive. It had a snap to it that reminded me of the briskness of spring, those cold days, windy days, days filled with anticipation of the actual turn. I loved it all, but especially these two lines:

Spring means transplanting the two pines that have sprouted near the coneflowers, watching the dogwood stems turn beet red with sap, waiting, waiting, waiting for the bloom of the peony. A whole year must pass, that’s how long I wait for the next peony to bloom.

ybonesy, thank you. I started thinking about the garden when I was writing it. Staring out the front window at the pines sticking up out of the snow. Thought about the work that is ahead of us when spring clean up comes. It’s a ways away here in the North. It will be a while before the snow melts and the ground unthaws. We’d like to paint the house this year, too. So I was thinking about the windows. It’s all connected! The details ground me. I have May Sarton to thank for the peony’s bloom. I think she mentioned it in something I was reading. I checked out a ton of her books for the Journal 365 Practice background. I love doing that — checking out everything I can on one writer. It’s a lot of fun!

Thankyou so much for the topic and your own enchanting writing practice. The last paragraph captured so much of the experience of spring. How we (I) try and grasp after change – usually I’m grasping non-change – to clear out from winter, but it comes in its own rythmn, different every year. Next spring (in Aust) I may watch the dance of the season a little more patiently and attentively. Thankyou, Craig

Craig, thank you for your gracious comment. Is it Fall there? It doesn’t feel like Spring is ever going to come to Minnesota this year. Endless Winter, we are expecting another snowstorm next week. Spring in Minnesota is something I really notice because it’s such a stark contrast to the long Winters. In Summer, I particularly notice the different flowers in the garden and when they bloom. Something different every month. It’s hard to believe that something can live in the frozen ground through a Winter like this!

Hello QuoinMonkey,
Yes, the weather is rich. We are coming towards Fall but more than ever the weather has reminded us this summer to live each day as it arrives, in tranquility, calm, flood, cyclone, burning-heat.. and the days of simple sunshine on a seabreeze.
I’ve read your site quietly for the last couple of years as I’ve journeyed into Natalie Goldberg’s books and I thank you (and all) for it.
Craig

Craig, I’m so happy to know that you’ve been quietly following red Ravine for a few years. When I hear that, it always makes my day. And makes me grateful for the practices and wisdom I learned from Natalie. Australia is a place I’ve always wanted to visit. I haven’t done much world travel over my life, but if I did I’d like to go to Scotland and Ireland to check out some of my ancestry, and to Australia, New Zealand, Nova Scotia. The earthquake in New Zealand looked so devastating on the news. I imagine you have gotten some of the same weather patterns there.

I like knowing that you are moving into Fall in Australia as we are moving into Spring in the United States. It’s the same when I hear from annieoakcake in Scotland. Just knowing that we’re all connected is comforting. It strikes an internal balance and makes my world so much larger than a pindot right here in my living room. Hope you’ll stop by again!